Richard Waymire


Stairway to SQL Server Agent

Stairway to SQL Server Agent - Level 8: Using External programs with SQL Server Agent

One common usage of SQL Server Agent historically has been the ability to shell out to the operating system and run command line programs, using SQL Server Agent primarily as a job scheduler. This article will examine the pros and cons of using the SQL Server 2008 & 2008 R2 Powershell subsystem versus the CmdExec subsystem to perform tasks in the Operating System.

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2019-03-26 (first published: )

6,913 reads

Stairway to SQL Server Agent

Stairway to SQL Server Agent - Level 9: Understanding Jobs and Security

Security is a confusing topic to many, especially when it comes to understanding what rights are needed to monitor and use SQL Server Agent. This article will examine the rights and roles used for SQL Server Agent, as well as the security context requirements for jobs.

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2019-03-26 (first published: )

10,737 reads

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Question of the Day

Checking Identities

The DBCC CHECKIDENT command is used when working with identity values. I have a table with 10 rows in it that looks like this:

TravelLogID CityID  StartDate   EndDate
1           1       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
2           2       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
3           3       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
4           4       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
5           5       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
6           6       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
7           7       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
8           8       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
9           9       2025-01-11  2025-01-16
10          10      2025-01-11  2025-01-16
The docs for DBCC CHECKIDENT say this if I run with only the table parameter: "If the current identity value for a table is less than the maximum identity value stored in the identity column, it is reset using the maximum value in the identity column. " I run this code:
DELETE dbo.TravelLog WHERE TravelLogID >= 9
GO
DBCC CHECKIDENT(TravelLog, RESEED)
GO
INSERT dbo.TravelLog
(
    CityID,
    StartDate,
    EndDate
)
VALUES
(4, '2025-09-14', '2025-09-17')
GO
What is the identity value for the new row inserted by the insert statement above?

See possible answers